MacBook Air. Now with a drive no one else interfaces with.

September 20, 2011 5:40 PM

MacBook Air won't boot properly. Need to get some files back!

I have a MacBook Air (revision 2, the kind that came out in mid 2009) that went kaput recently. Last weekend, when I woke it from sleep, it was grinding along until it came to a halt, shut down, and then couldn't boot normally.

I can get into safe mode (where you hold command+S when powering on), and I can read my hard drive. I try to run fsck -fy and get a series of errors. I try to mount the drive so I can read it, and get a series of errors. So, I can browse around in the console and read everything, but can't write or erase or copy or move anything.

I need to get some files off of this drive (yes, I should have backed up my stuff more recently). Reading this question makes me think that the Apple store won't try to recover data for me. (It also seems like that guy had the same problem I do.)

I took the thing apart and found out that this particular version of the Air uses a proprietary interface that no one seems to make external enclosures for. It's a really small ZIF interface, I think.

The good news: when I plug in my USB stick, I get a message that says USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): followed by a bunch of numbers. This makes me think that somewhere, it's able to read this USB drive, but I have no clue where it is, and I don't think I could mount it if I can't write to the original drive to create a mount point.

Outside of walking into the Apple store with the drive in hand and asking them if they can get files off of it, do you have any suggestions? I'm not interested in getting a new drive to save the machine, I'm interested in saving the files from the current hard drive.

If you can help, I'll be ever so much in your debt. We're talking nearly a year's worth of mathematics course material that I've written that I may have lost!

posted by King Bee to computers & internet (14 answers total)

Here's an external enclosure for 1.8" ZIF drives. Perhaps you could pull the drive, put it in here, and pull the files off on another Apple computer? You'll have to double check that it's the correct adapter, because I know each revision of Airs has had different drive options.

Also, I have not used this retailer, so I can't vouch for them. Only found them through google.
posted by sharkfu at 5:52 PM on September 20, 2011

I have found that enclosure as well, and read into it; it doesn't have the right adapter for the version of the Air that I have. If someone does stumble along an enclosure that does, that is definitely a solution.
posted by King Bee at 5:57 PM on September 20, 2011

Have you tried putting it into Target Mode and mounting the drive on another Mac?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:02 PM on September 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

It appears the Revision A had a 1.8" PATA ZIF adapter while the Revision B and C had a 1.8" SATA LIF (Low Insertion Force) adapter. If this info is correct, then this enclosure might work. Like I said, I get confused on the Air revisions, so you might double check in the Air sub-forums of Macrumors. There's probably an older thread there which might help.
posted by sharkfu at 6:07 PM on September 20, 2011

Blazecock Pileon: "Have you tried putting it into Target Mode and mounting the drive on another Mac"

AFAIK, target disk mode isn't possible on the early Air revisions because it doesn't have ethernet, firewire, and thunderbolt built in and you can't do TDM over USB.
posted by sharkfu at 6:08 PM on September 20, 2011

Ah, right. I forgot. Never mind.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:19 PM on September 20, 2011

AFAIK, target disk mode isn't possible on the early Air revisions because it doesn't have ethernet, firewire, and thunderbolt built in and you can't do TDM over USB.

I think the non-target-mode air boot it off of a network drive via WiFi and thus have a chance of preserving the data on the disk by touching it as little as possible before making a disk image using utilities on the computer you're booting from.
posted by zippy at 6:23 PM on September 20, 2011

(can boot off a network drive. I blame my AppleTalk connection)
posted by zippy at 6:24 PM on September 20, 2011

zippy: If I hold the option key when starting up, I get to a screen where I can select my HDD, as well as select my home network (which I can connect to). Is this what you're talking about? Once connected to the network, can I find this Air from a different Mac?

I suppose I could also try installing Leopard onto a USB drive and trying to boot from that...
posted by King Bee at 6:30 PM on September 20, 2011

This is why I always keep a *bootable* cloned backup on a USB HDD using Carbon Copy Cloner. That would solve your problem, as might booting from the install disc and trying to mount a USB drive from the terminal, or loading a USB HD with the legally not so kosher Snow Leopard 911 Pro and booting off that.
posted by drpynchon at 6:39 PM on September 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

While running safe mode, can you enable Remote Login in System Preferences -> Sharing? If so, just get an sftp client, (Filezilla works fine,) point it to the Air's IP address, provide name and password, and get the files off that way. (Or, using another device with a UNIX compatible terminal, such as another Mac or a Linux computer, run "sftp [e-mail]", (filling in the blanks as necessary,) navigate to the appropriate directories using "cd", and use "get" to grab what you need to.)
posted by fifthrider at 6:55 PM on September 20, 2011

It can't hurt to take it to the Genius Bar, to be honest, they've been much much more interested in helping me with my problem than toeing any company like. Give it a shot.
posted by Sphinx at 7:43 PM on September 20, 2011

drpynchon: I was able to boot with Snow Leopard 911, and if I'm to believe what is happening in front of me right now...files are being transferred to a USB volume! And yes, they are accessible when I plug it in to a different computer! Thank you for mentioning that, you are officially my favorite person on the planet for at least a week!

fifthrider: Thank you for the advice, but I led you astray. When I said "safe mode" above, I meant "single-user mode", mainly because I didn't know what I was talking about.

Thank you to everyone who responded! Perhaps I can even format this old drive and reinstall the OS and have a working computer.
posted by King Bee at 9:43 PM on September 20, 2011

Disk drives cost less than your time and data. Don't fsck up your life trying to drag more out of an old one.
posted by flabdablet at 5:27 AM on September 21, 2011